Bulletin from Washington DC: Another Trump low in mind-numbing callousness. Will the world accept our heartfelt apology?

I have friends who are really good about avoiding most of it, arguing correctly that if anything truly major happens, they’ll find out. Even if I wasn’t a former reporter, I’m just not wired that way, so ingest I do.

But there’s a bizarre duality about my life these days, as while my micro is pretty great, the macro is horrid and ever-present, even for me. (For most of the 70% of Americans who aren’t white men, both perspectives are dire.)

Here’s what it’s like: I’m having coffee when I get a text from a young man I’ve known and adored almost his entire life, asking if I’d do a reading at his wedding. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t happen to me ever, so I spend the next hour walking the streets aimlessly with a stupid smile on my face and feeling full in the best way. Then I can’t not remember that he works for a progressive political organisation and has key Midwestern primaries coming up. This reminds me that last night five Indiana Republican state legislators lost their seats in primaries thanks to a tidal wave of Maga money. Their crime? Refusing to join Trump’s illegal campaign to redraw congressional districts in a way that advantages Republicans.

I come home, check my email and there are two breaking news alerts from The New York Times: 1. “The Times Wins 3 Pulitzers”, 2. “Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settle their legal dispute.” Okay, so the Times has gone all in on the breathless CNN approach to calling everything breaking news. Mostly they’re excited about the Met Gala, which is admittedly gross, but way less gross than the Gatsby-style soirée Trump threw in October a few hours before 42 million Americans lost their food stamps. The theme, “A little party never killed nobody”, provided yet another new low in mind-numbing callousness.

More breaking news: There are 17 Americans trapped on a hantavirus cruise somewhere. There are also 133 non-Americans on the ship, but I have to do my own maths to find this out. So I turn to a TikTok video, “Animals Reunite With People Who Raised Them”, which I highly recommend as a doomscrolling antidote.

As I’m folding laundry, I foolishly turn on the White House press briefing, hosted today by Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio. Rubio wants to be president so badly it hangs on him like bad cologne, and he’s funny and charming and as such scary. But he clearly has no soul, given he now sits at the feet of a man he once called a “con-man” and the “most vulgar man ever to run for president”.

The other likely 2028 Republican presidential nominee, JD Vance, once called Trump “America’s Hitler”.

So I escape to Substack, a cuddly social media platform where my little corner of the algorithm is mostly almost annoyingly supportive essayists and poets, but in tonight’s feed someone posts: “Watching the California governor’s debate. Pray for me.” This reminds me that because of the state’s “jungle” primary it’s entirely possible a state that’s only 25% registered Republican will offer only Republican choices for governor.

The truth is, nothing right now is normal, because our society’s norms have been shredded by Maga’s perfect storm of greed, corruption and cruelty. Instead, we are left with far too many questions – among them, can we rebuild our democracy to not only erase Maga but to be systemically more equitable and just? Can our political process offer effective, ethical leaders who don’t immediately choose fear as their top governing strategy? And more to the point here, will the world accept our heartfelt apology?